


Crater Lake (That Ol' Swimmin' Hole)

by josephina_x



Category: Smallville
Genre: Boys Being Boys, Fluff, Gen, Slice of Life, Summer, Swimming, Swimming Boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 19:33:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2320844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark and Lex go swimming. (...The water may have other plans.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crater Lake (That Ol' Swimmin' Hole)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tasabian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tasabian/gifts).



> Title: Crater Lake (That Ol' Swimmin' Hole)  
> Author: [josephina_x](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com)  
> Fandom: Smallville  
> Pairing: Clark+Lex, Clark/Lex implied  
> Rating: G  
> Spoilers: general for early seasons  
> Word count: 1300+  
> Summary: Clark and Lex go swimming. (...The water may have other plans.)  
> Warnings: Un-beta'd.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.  
> Comments: Yes, please! :)  
> Author's Note: So, I missed tasabian's birthday, but I managed to tease a prompt or two out of her for a belated-birthday ficlet: "some happy Clark/Lex fic" and "since it's summer... a fic where the guys go swimming together! (But random quasi-domestic bliss is very nice too.)" Yep, summer. ...Er, better late than absolutely-never? (Also, I may also stretch the definition of "happy" "quasi-domestic bliss" a bit, too. Because Clex and their bickering. Eheh. ^_^;; )

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex stifled a sigh as he looked up at his friend.

"Clark..." he began.

Clark, towering over him, crossed his arms and gave him a _look_.

This time, Lex didn't stifle his sigh.

Instead, he slowly pushed himself to his feet, up off of his foldable lawn chair, and said, "If I drown, it's all your fault."

"You won't drown!" Clark insisted, as he dropped his arms, turned, and followed Lex at his side as they walked down towards the edge of the lake.

"Water hates me," Lex stated flatly and unequivocally, as he came to a stop as the water line. The water line attempted to lap at his toes.

"You've never drowned before," Clark put out there.

"There was the bridge," Lex put out there, kicking lightly at the mucky dirt-sand he was standing on.

"That would be your car hating you," Clark said.

"My cars love me," Lex said, "I treat them well. They get only the finest of mechanics." He eyed the water line with much suspicion.

"--And maybe the guard rail and the bale of wire, too. I hear that bales of wire may have it out for you," Clark continued, judicious in his blame, as though he hadn't heard Lex's response at all.

"But I almost drowned," Lex insisted, sliding his eyes up and over to look at Clark sidelong.

"But you didn't," Clark told him firmly. "I made sure you didn't then, and I'm here now, so you won't now either."

"There was that plane crash with Desiree," Lex noted, looking back down at the water line again. The shifting, shifty water line.

"You didn't drown then, either," Clark pointed out. "You ended up on dry land."

"Because water hates me," Lex said, peering down at the water line with something approaching a glare.

He practically heard the confusion steaming off of Clark's skin without even needing to look at him sideways, or to hear Clark ask, "What?"

"Water hates me. It hates me so much it spat me back out again; it didn't want me," Lex clarified.

Clark's brow furrowed; he looked caught between a smile and a frown. Then he shook his head. "Okay, but how does water hating you end with you drowning?" Clark asked him, clearly at a loss. "That's the opposite of you drowning!"

Lex straightened and turned towards Clark. "It doesn't." At Clark's flabbergasted look, he added, "I didn't say that I'd drown because of _water_ ; I said that if I drowned it'd be _your fault_."

Clark blinked once, twice. Then his jaw firmed.

"You're not going to drown," he said.

"Okay then," Lex said under his breath, in a very 'if you _say_ so...' way. He turned away from Clark and gingerly poked a toe in the water past the water line.

He immediately removed his toe from the water past the water line.

"That's freezing cold!" Lex protested hotly, thrusting a finger in the direction of the offending liquid.

"That's good," Clark informed him, "because it's really hot out."

Lex crossed his arms and glared at the waterline like it was out to get him, then backed up another step not-quite-hurriedly as a small wash of water lapped up a good bit further towards his poor, bare, unprotected feet than it had while he'd been standing there.

"Lex..." Clark began.

"--Do you know how cold water needs to be to cause hypothermia, Clark?" Lex cut him off. "Because I do. It's 70 degrees Fahrenheit -- which is not that cold," Lex informed him. " _That_ ," he pointed at the water again, "is at least that cold!"

"No, it isn't," Clark said. "It just feels that cold because it's really hot and sunny out," Clark informed him. "And even if it _was_ that cold, to get hypothermia I'm pretty sure that you'd need to be in the water a couple hours at _least_. We're not going to be swimming that long." After a pause, Clark then added, "And I'd still rescue you."

"I don't see how that'd help," Lex grumbled. "I'd still have hypothermia."

Clark stared at him for a moment, then closed his eyes and shook his head slightly.

He opened his eyes and said, "I'd rescue you from drowning, and _then_ the hypothermia, too."

Lex eyed him sidelong again.

Then Lex looked down at the waterline again.

He looked up at Clark. "I still don't want to go in the lake."

Clark crossed his arms.

Lex crossed his arms right back.

They stared at each other for awhile.

Clark let out a huge sigh and dropped his arms. "Fine," he said, and he reached forward and scooped Lex up one-handed, pulling him up to sit on his forearm, before turning and walking back towards Lex's lawn chair, carted him back away from the waterline.

Lex, for his part, quickly slid his arms around Clark's shoulder and neck, respectively, and grabbed onto him for balance, staring over Clark's back at the steadily-receding lakeshore.

Clark came to a stop a good distance away from Lex's lawn chair.

Lex waited, then frowned a bit and looked around, because Clark wasn't setting him down.

"Clark, what..." he began, pushing himself away from Clark's chest slightly, then latched onto Clark again as he swung around. "Wait, what are you--" And then Lex got a glance at the look Clark was giving him. "Oh, no-no-no _no wait **CLARK!**_ " he yelled as Clark starting running them both back the way they came.

"Aaaaaaa-ha-ha-ha-hah!" Clark laughed as he jumped them both up into the air at-speed, and they sailed out a good few yards over the lake on a trajectory that shortly became controlled only by gravity and the combined weight of their bodies hurtling forward in motion.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!" Lex screamed as they both came down again, and he lost his hold on Clark when they both smashed down into the middle of the lake.

Lex burbled and flailed a bit under the water, then shuddered uncontrollably as the temperature really _hit_ him. In less time than conscious thought, he got himself oriented and kicked his legs hard.

"GAH!" Lex yelled out as he broke the surface, then spluttered when Clark surfaced shortly thereafter and shook his head, flinging droplets of water from his head and hair in all directions.

"You--" Lex began, but Clark was just grinning at him.

"See? It's not so bad," said Clark, bobbing there in front of him, looking happy and content.

"IT'S _COLD!!!_ " Lex complained at Clark, glaring at him as he tread water in place.

Clark tilted his head at him slightly, but his grin didn't fade any further than a smile.

"N- _never_ should've cleaned all the meteor rock out of the lake," Lex muttered as he continued to tread water. "Keep it all unsafe. Serve you right."

"I used to swim here even when it still had the rocks in it," Clark pointed out good-naturedly.

Lex grumbled at him a bit, under his breath.

Clark sighed slightly, then pushed himself forwards through the water and scooped up a shivering Lex in one arm. He kicked upwards and tilted them back, stopping their motion once he was floating on his back and Lex was laying across his chest.

"Better?" Clark asked.

"...Not really," Lex muttered, even though Clark _was_ fairly warm.

Clark wrapped his arm around Lex to hold him a little more closely, the better to snuggle up to him a bit more, as they floated along in the water. He thought on this awhile. "I guess I could heat up the lake a bit for you, maybe?"

"...No," Lex said finally, "You shouldn't." He shifted slightly to slide his arms up around Clark's neck, and relax a bit more up against him. "You might kill the fish," he told Clark grumpily.

"Well, okay." Clark smiled. "I still promise to save you from hypothermia, you know."

Lex sighed.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Author's Note:**

> AN2: 'Cause you gotta show your sources. Yeah, apparently even 80 F water can leave you hypothermic if you're in long enough (though why you'd want to be in the water for 12 hours or so at a time is beyond me -- you'd have to change scuba tanks multiple times even if you were diving in shallow water and spent half your time snorkeling).


End file.
